Eastern approaches

Ex-communist Europe

War criminals in the former Yugoslavia

161 and done

Jul 22nd 2011, 17:35 by T.J. | BELGRADE

ON WEDNESDAY morning I took Serbia’s JAT Airways flight from Belgrade to Brussels. It is not direct. It stops to let people off in Amsterdam and to pick up people there who are going to Belgrade. But, if you are going to Brussels, you don’t have to get off the plane in Holland. While we were waiting I turned on my mobile and received a text to say that Goran Hadzic had been arrested. Then, officious crew members fussed about and demanded that I turn off my phone in case it interfered with the plane’s communications and prompted our parked plane to crash.

Today Mr Hadzic took the same route to Holland. Like so many before him, he was to be met by officials of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and transferred to Scheveningen, the seaside detention centre of the war-crimes court in The Hague. That should allow Serbia’s 7.5m other citizens to resume their journey to Brussels and eventual EU membership—unless, of course, something else interferes and the project crashes. 

Twenty years ago I drove with a friend down a small country road in eastern Croatia. It began to get creepy. Then we came across tree trunks on the road and stopped. Slowly a group of armed men began to emerge from the bushes and trees by the side of the road. One of them was Mr Hadzic. Until very recently he had been a warehouse manager, a job much prized in the former Yugoslavia thanks to the unparalleled opportunities it offered for filching whatever was stored in the warehouse.

In 1992 Mr Hadzic became the prime minister of what was then the short-lived Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), which comprised the three breakaway areas of Croatia. Despite this grand-sounding title the former warehouseman was never really much of a key figure in his own right, although he was the right man for the job: playing a small role in the creation of a Greater Serbia which would stretch from Kosovo in the south through Bosnia to the Adriatic coast in Croatia.

Far more important roles were played in Croatia by Jovan Raskovic, the founder of the party that would, after his ousting, lead the Croatian Serbs into their eventual cataclysmic disaster, and by Milan Babic, who preceded Mr Hadzic as prime minister. Mr Babic, a former dentist, committed suicide in Scheveningen in 2006 after pleading guilty to charges of war crimes. Milan Martic, the former RSK police chief and the leader, was also far more important, and is also now in The Hague. 

And then of course there was Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Knin garrison of the Yugoslav Army. His role in the Croatian war is often forgotten by outsiders, though not of course by the tens of thousands of Croats who were ethnically cleansed from RSK territory. Mr Hadzic was indicted for extermination, murder and ethnic cleansing in 2004.

With the arrest of Mr Mladic in May and Mr Hadzic’s extradition to The Hague today, a whole baleful chapter of Serbian and Balkan history closes. Of 161 people indicted, every single one has now been accounted for.

What this means for Serbia cannot be underestimated. Ever since the fall in 2000 of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, the country has been tied to the past by the issue of the ICTY. That chain is now cut. The Kosovo chain remains to be cut however. Without resolving the issue of Serbia’s relations with its former province, it will never be able to become a normal country.

Readers' comments

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vlgagic

Does Mr. Judah also write for US Weekly? This article read just like an expose of Brittney Spears: basic, dull, and common.

Gentius

To David Duluth, there were never 250 k servs in Kosova. Maybe in military numbers but never civillians. Never. Do not solely rely on servian propaganda. Maybe there were about 100 thousand civillians living there, colonisators, coming to Kosova in 1920-ies during the expelling of Albanians to Turkey or the second wave of colonisators in 1950-ies during the second expelling of Albanians to Turkey. While you mention this false number of 250K servians expelled, which is a lie, you tend to forget about 200 k albanians that had to leave their homes since 1981. You forget mentioning about 500 k albanians expelled between 1920-1955. Do not be a oneeyed snake mr Duluth. I understand religion plays a huge part on this opinion of yours but it ought to be secondary. There were never 250 k servians in kosova, never in history of the world.

David Duluth

This would be a great chart if accompanied with corresponding data on ethnic cleansing by nationality.

What you would see is that 300k Serbs have been ethnically cleansed from Croatia, and 250k from Kosovo. These are huge numbers. What you find is that those that are creating homogenous ethnic states are being rewarded by the West and those that are not- see: Serbia, are continually being punished, economically, politically, culturally, etc.

Lassitude

Perhaps to the naive and cowardly (i.e., the EU and their American ally), the Balkan Wars of the 1990's are "done," but not for the those who survived the brutality of the nationalist thugs responsible for those wars. Locking up a handful of war criminals at The Hague has done little to rectify the conscience of the people who supported "ethnic cleansing" and still do so today.

xrocker

Coming to terms with the crimes committed in your name by no means implies self-flagellation or self hatred or losing dignity. To the contrary.
Serbia is no priority for EU, you are right, but EU demise is not in the offing, regardless its current troubles.

napper6162

so it's time to go after war criminals in the U.S. now?

has the ICC opened an investigation on Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, GW Bush, Barack Obama, ... ????

Farringdon

I do often wonder about the person(s) who writes this blog. Are you 12? It is so incredibly naive, forever peddling the same old Atlantic earnest absolutism. Serbia's entry into the EU? Journey to Brussels? Have you not been reading the news? The EU will be very lucky to survive the next three years in the current form. More accessions is really not its priority right now, and probably ever.

What has in fact happenned is that Tadic had sold off his country's dignity by handing over scores of its citizens to ICTY and fomenting a culture of self-flagellation and self-hatred among the Serbs. The prize was supposed European and NATO membership (which has so enriched the Baltic states who, as you know, are currently enjoying unseen economic prosperity) and bliss everafter. The real result turned out to be national humiliation and the loss of a substantial chunk of its territory, which publications such as this encourage Serbia to "let go of", implying that Serbia is somehow acting abnormally in trying to protect what is its own.

jvictor1789

I do not know why, but suddenly it came to my mind Monty Python´s The meaning of life", when the public (elite private) school teacher, after boring to death the students with the Old Testament war chronicles of the Amorites versus the Girgashites, takes offence at the desecration of the stuffed bird presented at the school by the board of whatever locality in honour of captain something, who died gloriously..."in order to keep China British"

About Eastern approaches

Eastern approaches deals with the economic, political, security and cultural aspects of the eastern half of the European continent. It incorporates the long-running "Europe.view" weekly column. The blog is named after the wartime memoirs of the British soldier Sir Fitzroy Maclean.

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